


The King's Poison

by AngeNoir



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Reichenbach, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is called back to London urgently, because John Watson has done the unbelievable.</p><p>But there's a reason it was once called 'the king's poison.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	The King's Poison

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songs-of-the-ood](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=songs-of-the-ood).



> This is my fill for [song-of-the-ood](http://song-of-the-ood.tumblr.com)’s prompt “You’re lying. That’s impossible. Without a doubt.”

“You’re lying.”

There was silence in the room, save for the muffled noise that came from the mobile clutched tightly in too-pale, too-thin fingers.

“That’s impossible.” The voice wasn’t thick, or deep, wasn’t the drawl it once had been. This voice was shaking, thin, teetering on the edge of sanity. “Without a doubt. There’s no way—”

The muffled answer from the mobile cut the voice off, harsh and pointed, and then the tall, too-lean figure was snatching up a bag and dashing out the dingy flat, uncaring of the civilians shoved out of the way. “I’m on my way. Please, I’m on my way—”

Now, soft and almost gentle, the muffled answer came.

“No. He’s strong. He’ll hold on.”

At the street, the arm not clutching the mobile raised to hail a cab. Long legs carried the scarecrow-like frame over to the halted automobile and then the man, face bruised, eyes sunken, sallow and sickly, leaned forward and said in flawless German, “Airport, double if you can get me there in under fifteen minutes.”

Sherlock Holmes was coming home.

-+-+-

At the airport, Sherlock was greeted with a black government-issued car. Under normal situations, Sherlock would refuse the help, would find his own taxi and make his way to Barts under his own power. This, however, was an emergency, and Mycroft, for all of his odious presence, was a necessary evil to getting to the bottom of this. Not that Sherlock had more information than the bare bones – that John was in the hospital, near-death. That the doctors were thinking it was attempted suicide.

But John wouldn’t do that. Not John, not his strong soldier. Sherlock had been – yes, he’d been gone a long time, three years, and Molly’s increasingly clipped and quiet updates revealed more about the deterioration of his doctor than anything else, but – but John wouldn’t do such a thing. John was made of earth, of steel, of permanence. John had both grounded Sherlock and raised him to heights previously unknown, and imagining a world without John was – akin to imagining a world without the sun. Even if one worked nights and slept days, the sun was still  _there_.

“What happened, Mycroft?” Sherlock demanded, English a bit rusty from disuse.

Mycroft looked him over, and while there was disdain in his look, there was also barely-concealed worry. Whether for John or for Sherlock, Sherlock couldn’t tell; it was hard enough to pin Mycroft down on any kind of emotion in any case.

Finally, Mycroft shook his head slowly. “It appears that three mornings ago, John Watson went into the kitchen and then laced his morning cuppa with arsenic.”

Sherlock stared at Mycroft in shock for half a second before his brain began vehemently denying it. “Unlikely. How did he purchase it? You’ve been monitoring his purchases, I assumed?”

Mycroft wiped a hand over his face, fingers trembling slightly. “Arsenic appears in many otherwise-harmless kitchen and cleaning products, as well as outdoors products. I’m having my people comb through his purchasing records now.” He hesitated, and then said slowly, “These past three years have not been kind to him, Sherlock.”

“He would not do something like this.”

“Nevertheless, the facts of the matter stand that there was arsenic in his cup, the only reason anyone noticed was because his convulsions brought Mrs. Hudson up the stairs, and he has been severely depressed for the past three years.”

Sherlock shook his head, mind working overtime. There was some fact, some clue that Mycroft had not had the time to see or was too close to see, that was all. “Why now? It makes no sense now, and you know it.”

Mycroft looked at him with pity. “Sherlock, three days ago it was the third anniversary of your faked fall.”

-+-+-

Molly Hooper was sitting in the waiting room when Sherlock stalked in the doors, though he ignored her to immediately make his way over to the nurse. Before he could even try to get any information from her, Molly was at his elbow, tugging him gently to one side.

“Getting mad at her won’t solve anything,” she murmured, patting his hand. “If you want to see him, I can take you to his room.”

Inside the hospital room, Sherlock stared down at the small frame of Dr. John Watson, padded restraints holding him down, oxygen tubes running into his nose, IVs dripping fluid into his veins. The sight of it made Sherlock’s stomach turn, and he turned to look at Molly.

“He was – depressed, Sherlock, I told you that,” she said quietly.

“You didn’t say he was suicidal,” Sherlock growled, but his voice was quiet, weak.

She shook her head and murmured, “I only ever saw him while he was at the clinic, working. He rarely went out, and he stayed away from almost everyone – Lestrade, myself. Definitely Mycroft.”

“This seems very out of character for John,” Sherlock insisted.

“People change, Sherlock. Your death hit him… very hard.”

“Molly?”

Sherlock and Molly turned to see Lestrade entering the room. Sherlock had a bare few seconds to take in the changes to Lestrade’s face – more lines in his face, no tan where his wedding ring used to be, a slow and weary gait instead of his more versatile and confident step. Then Lestrade had crossed the room and punched Sherlock square in the nose.

Immediately, Molly moved to stand between him and Lestrade, scolding the detective, and Sherlock gripped his nose – it didn’t feel broken, but it was aching – as the nurse walked into the room, demanding to know what all the noise was about.

There was a soft huff of air from the bed, and everyone fell silent as John slowly blinked his eyes and then stared out at them in confusion. “Am I – dreaming?” he asked, voice faint. John went to sit up, and when he couldn’t – the restraints on his arms – he stared down at them for a long moment and then looked up at them in panic. “What’s wrong with me?!”

Molly moved first, stepping past Lestrade and to John’s side. “John, you just need to take it easy. You’ve been in the hospital for three days, and it was pretty touch-and-go there for a while.”

“Am I crazy? Finally gone round the bend?” John asked, and his voice was bitter and hopeful all at the same time.

Lestrade glowered at Sherlock, but his words were directed at John when he said, “No, lad, not crazy.”

“I’ve got restraints on,” John pointed out, and his voice was gaining in strength. That was a good sign, Sherlock told himself. John sounded rational, and though his color was still too pale and his breathing too labored to indicate full recovery at the moment, he was more or less on the way to full recovery at least.

Lestrade finally turned from Sherlock to look at John sympathetically. “John, you tried to kill yourself three days ago.”

There was dead silence in the hospital room, and then John blinked a few times at Lestrade before croaking, “I’m sorry – what?”

“You tried to commit suicide three days ago, lacing your tea with the rat poison you bought five days ago,” Sherlock explained, taking care to make sure his voice didn’t shake.

John stared at Sherlock, then looked around at the others standing there. “Did – am I crazy? Or did you hear that?”

Molly opened her mouth, looking confused, but Lestrade seemed to grasp what exactly it was that John was asking. “If you mean, is Sherlock really standing here, the answer is yes, the bloody bastard’s alive and present.”

“Oh,” John said, and fainted dead away.

-+-+-

“He insists he didn’t attempt suicide,” Mycroft murmured, ignoring Sherlock as the younger man paced the halls and cursed the slow process of the doctors. John seemed stable enough, but they didn’t want to release him while there was still a risk of him committing suicide. A sentiment that Sherlock believed in whole-heartedly; while he was, for the most part, responsible for John’s deteriorated mental state, that didn’t change the fact that John needed to be better in order for him to lead.

Still, there was some niggling doubt in the back of Sherlock’s head, some prickling that let him know that a few pieces of the evidence were not stacking up neatly.

“Are you listening to me, Sherlock?”

Sherlock whirled on his heel. “You said he was staying at our shared flat?”

“He never left. Lived with the ghosts, Mrs. Hudson would always say when I came calling.”

Sherlock paused, intrigued. “And how often did you go calling?”

“Often enough,” Mycroft said quietly. “After a while he simply stopped reacting to me.”

Sherlock let that thought sink in before letting out a sharp noise of frustration. “I need to see the flat, Mycroft. Now.”

“You won’t find anything there,” Mycroft told him frankly. “I’ve been over the living room and his bedroom, looking for a note or motive. I’ve even examined the cup that John had been drinking in.”

“All rooms needed to be searched,” Sherlock pointed out. “You might have missed something vital.”

“Quite frankly, Sherlock, my main concern was getting him to a hospital, and then making sure he had the best care.”

Clenching his hands into fists in his pocket, Sherlock stalked to the doorway. “I want a car to take me to 221B Baker Street immediately.”

“Surely you would wish to be here when he wakes up again?”

Sherlock paused, remembering the pain, the betrayal, the hope and the fear, in those blue eyes. “He’ll be fine without me,” he said roughly. “I refuse to believe he would have committed suicide. It’s not like John.”

“He had a therapist before you came into his life, because returning soldiers are more likely to commit suicide. He found the battlefield again in you, only to have it ripped away from him. He’s lived for three years, and refused to believe you were a fake. He thought you were coming back, Sherlock.”

“Exactly!” Sherlock exclaimed, using his finger for pointed emphasis. “He thought I was coming back. Why, then, would he commit suicide? Someone coerced him to drink that cup of tea.”

“There was no sign of forced entry, no sign that there was a second man in either the kitchen or in the living room. John Watson walked in, took his mug down from the shelf, poured water into the mug, steeped his tea, put in the rat poison – traces of it found on the table next to the sugar cube bowl – and then stirred it before walking over to the living room, sitting down in his chair, and downing the whole cup in one go,” Mycroft said wearily. “I’ve been over this, Sherlock. Many, many times. Perhaps it’s best to leave this up to the therapists.”

Taking in a deep breath, Sherlock let it out in a controlled breath and said pointedly, “Please, Mycroft. Let me look at the flat.”

-+-+-

When Sherlock entered the flat, he was struck with a sudden heavy feeling in his heart. The flat, for all that it was empty and all the lights were turned off, still smacked of ‘home’. A quiet calmness seemed to wrap around Sherlock’s limbs and he felt curiously lighter and more anchored to the ground than ever before. Stepping into the living room, he turned on the light and stared at the front room.

Barely anything had been changed.

Oh, there was less clutter on the tables and desk than there had been three years ago, the books on the bookshelves were all dusted and neatened. There were sheets on the couch – John slept there, he could tell, unlikely otherwise for the sheets to be folded up and yet still have wrinkles, as if not yet gone through the laundry. Perhaps John slept down here because his limp made it too difficult to make it up the narrow staircase that led to the second bedroom. Or perhaps John preferred to be away from the drafty second room – though Mycroft would continue to pay Sherlock’s part of the rent, John didn’t enjoy being beholden to Mycroft.

( _He didn’t mind asking Sherlock for money_.)

Putting that thought out of his mind, Sherlock moved around the living room as if it was a crime scene – because it was, no matter what Mycroft or the others thought, it  _was_  a crime scene. Someone had forced his doctor to drink the tea. John would not have attempted to commit suicide.

Sherlock’s armchair was clean, untouched, though John’s armchair was notably worn, as if John spent a long time on the chair. Sherlock looked into the grate; steady signs of use. Then again, it was winter, and it saved on heating to use a fire instead of use the gas. Still, it must have been lonely for John to sit here night after night, across from an empty chair, with nothing but the crackling of a fire as a friend.

Which made Sherlock wonder. Was there someone else in his life? Molly was supposed to befriend John, or at least help him get better. Sherlock had counted on Lestrade staying in John’s life, and Mrs. Hudson remaining for John as well. Still, there wasn’t a sign of their presence anywhere in the flat. No more than a few regular dishes were in the drainer, the fridge revealed only enough food for one person (and barely that, which would explain the weight loss Sherlock had noted on John when he’d walked into the hospital room), and there were no signs of disturbance in the cabinets that could hint that John had made tea for more than one person. Just his cup, consistently used, and his bowl and dishes and one set of cutlery.

Sherlock moved back into the living room, looking at the mug – emptied – lying on the floor beside John’s armchair. Obviously, John had sat down here and begun to drink. And drunk the entire thing, as well; lending support to the hypothesis that John had purposefully drunk down the arsenic.

But no, there were some inconsistencies. If John had fallen with the mug still in his hand, it would have shattered. Instead, there was a faint ring on the low table between the two armchairs; John had knocked off the cup from the table, even though the table was far away from the chair. Convulsions? Possibly. Still was a reach, though – it looked more likely that John had deliberately aimed to knock the mug off the table. Why, though? What could John possibly gain from such a situation? Knocking off the mug could create a loud thump, which would surely alert Mrs. Hudson, who had been downstairs at the time…

What if John had been attempting to warn Mrs. Hudson? What if he had not attempted to commit suicide, and instead accidentally ingested the rat poison?

It seemed impossible, however. How did one ‘accidentally’ ingest something that was very clearly  _not_ tea and very clearly labeled  _not_  for eating? Unless John got his boxes mixed up, or had not realized his hands were still soiled with arsenic as he prepared his tea.

But John was a doctor. Skilled in telling the differences between obvious poison and the actually edible.

A quiet rustling sound came from upstairs. Sounded like rats, scurrying in the walls, which was probably why John had initially bought the rat poison. Sherlock ascended the stairs until he entered the bedroom that John slept in while he and Sherlock had lived together.

This room was deserted, a fine layer of dust over everything. Nothing seemed out of place, and though the room smelled musty, it certainly didn’t smell of rats. It did, however, smell like rat poison.

Sherlock cast his thoughts back over his initial denial, his current position in hunting down the rest of Moriarty’s web, and he cursed to himself as he dashed down the stairs, sprinting into the kitchen and snatching up the box of tea bags before whirling around to his chemistry set (still kept out, still kept _neat_ , nicely polished and well taken care of, bless John) and cutting open the first bag of tea.

-+-+-

“You know how close I am to closing the net on the dregs of Moriarty’s network.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow at Sherlock. “This hardly seems like an appropriate time to bring that up.”

“You must know; certainly you knew how to contact me in Germany.”

“Yes,” Mycroft said grudgingly.

Sherlock nodded decisively. “You and I both know Moriarty had to have left someone competent in charge after his death, considering how long his network continued to operate without his guiding hands. We speculated a right hand man. I had heard a name – Moran – but hadn’t managed to pin anything else conclusively to the name.”

“Sherlock, I do believe there is a tad more serious business taking place at this moment,” Mycroft said severely.

“Don’t you  _see_?” Sherlock snapped. “On the cusp of finding this last danger, of finding the last linchpin in Moriarty’s web, John Watson attempts to commit suicide by ingesting arsenic – arsenic from  _rat_ poison, when it is clear that, though John put rat poison up in the second bedroom, there  _are_  no rats there.”

Mycroft blinked slowly. “You think that Moran had someone poison John without John knowing? No signs of forced entry, remember. How did they get in?’

“The latch on the window over the sink is chipped a bit – and unlocked. John routinely leaves it unlocked in the summer months, but never in the winter, and so it begins to stick past mid-December. Even a talented picklock would have to scrape at the mechanism to get it open.”

“As you pointed out, John is a doctor,” Mycroft said, but Sherlock could see him start to put the points together. “He would notice the scent of rat poison, I would think. He’d notice that something seemed off.”

“Arsenic is odorless, tasteless – the King’s Poison, you know,” Sherlock said immediately. “Extracting the arsenic from the rat poison isn’t exactly difficult, and soaking the bags of tea John has lying around in arsenic is enough to give John a near-fatal dose. I’ve tested all the bags of tea from the new box John is using, and they all test positive for arsenic.”

Mycroft pressed his fingers together, narrowing his brow. “I had thought my security measures on the flat good enough to prevent such a thing from happening. How did he know to go after John?”

“If he suspected that I was alive, he’d also have to know that I faked my death. If he was as high up in Moriarty’s rankings as I believe, he’d have known that I had three weak points of sentiment – and he went after the most obvious one.”

“Luring you back here into a trap seems counterproductive. Why would he go through all this just to have you figure it out and be caught for it in the end?”

 _Because he has an ace up his sleeve_ , Sherlock thought, but did not say.

-+-+-

“Did anyone come asking after John?” Sherlock asked, bustling through the hospital doors and blowing past Molly, who seemed to always be present at John’s side nowadays.

“No, no one has,” she offered. “Though John’s being kept sedated – he keeps getting worked up. He thinks you were a dream, Sherlock, and that he actually is crazy.”

Sherlock cleared his throat and tried not to look as worried as he felt. “Well, lead the way, Molly – let’s settle this once and for all.”

In John’s room, John was hooked up to an oxygen mask, a nurse was checking John’s charts, and Lestrade sat at John’s left side, speaking with him though John wasn’t responding. When Sherlock walked into the room, however, John’s entire body went on alert and he focused on Sherlock alone.

“Come back to put him in a tizzy, then?” Lestrade demanded.

While Sherlock could appreciate the faithful qualities Lestrade had in spades, he was more concerned with the nurse who was moving closer and closer to the bed. “Moran, I presume?”

Lestrade turned to look at the man who suddenly had a syringe up against John’s right arm, a queer smile across his face. “Pleasure, Sherlock, I’m sure. Only I’m not Moran – just his emissary, I guess you could call me. Moran wanted your attention away from Germany until he could pull out some vital resources, and you fell for it.”

“Yes, I suppose you could say I did. Only I think we both know you’re lying – you  _are_  Moran. Moran was the right hand man of Moriarty; skilled, and sharp, and able to pull something off as tricky as lacing John’s tea bags with arsenic in a way that not even John would suspect. Moran would have been with Moriarty long enough to learn how to make people dance to his tune – you did have a recorder playing sounds of scuttling in the upstairs bedroom, didn’t you? The only disturbances in the dust were John’s footprints, putting the rat poison out – there were no real rats. And once he’d bought the poison, all you needed to do is slip in one time that John was out at the clinic, extract the arsenic, soak the tea bags, then dry them and set them back in John’s box – all without leaving any trace of your presence, except for the slight scuff mark on the windowsill.”

There was a burst of motion, John’s left arm coming up and gripping the syringe before Moran could drive it into his flesh, twisting his body until Moran overbalanced and sprawled across the hospital bed. Instantly, Lestrade was there with handcuffs, and John sat there, panting, as Sherlock stared at him in surprise.

“You left me,” John said, voice low and guttural.

Sherlock inclined his head to Moran, pretending that Lestrade wasn’t listening in to the conversation. “And you can see why. Moriarty’s network extended farther than even I expected.”

“You shouldn’t have left me.”

“I didn’t want to risk your life.”

John snorted out something extraordinarily rude. “Sherlock Holmes, you are a bloody fool. I risk my life because I deem it necessary, and you don’t get to take that choice away from me.”

Lestrade got Moran to his feet and marched him out the door. “I’ll expect an explanation, Sherlock. But no one deserves an explanation more than John.”

When he left the two of them alone, John glowered at Sherlock and gestured impatiently at the chair Lestrade had been sitting in. “Well, sit down,” he snapped.

Gingerly, Sherlock took the seat and began in a rush, “Moriarty was going to kill you, John. You, and Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson – if I didn’t fall.”

“You could have told me that,” John pointed out.

“No, John – no, as cruel as it might have seemed, your grief and Mrs. Hudson’s grief and Lestrade’s grief – those were what made my death believable. Without those, I would not have had the freedom I have had these past three years to move through Moriarty’s web, pulling up the linchpins as I traveled. Moran is the last man, the last key in the various chains that interlock. With him captured I can – I can come home.”

“Aren’t you already home?” John asked, and his voice was biting.

Sherlock didn’t deal well with emotions or with sentiment, and so he looked down at his hands (clasped together, nervous, even though he hadn’t told them to do so, how odd) and said softly, “That depends if you’ll accept me back into 221B, of course. I wouldn’t want to – presume.”

There was a grumble from John, and then John’s left hand darted out, grabbed the collar of Sherlock’s coat, and yanked the lanky man over the edge of the bed and pressed their lips together. It was thoroughly unremarkable, beyond the fact that it was their first kiss – John was still weakened from the arsenic, John’s aim wasn’t as impeccable as he’d like to believe, and their teeth cut up on the other’s lips, and there was too much surprise and motion for it to be enjoyable.

Still, when John pulled back, eyes alight and fierce, and said pointedly, “If you ever leave me again, Sherlock Holmes, I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth,” something warm settled into Sherlock’s chest.

He was home.


End file.
